Wrestling Globe Newsletter by Mike Aldren – All the latest professional wrestling news, gossip and occasional opinion direct to your mailbox.
WGN is read by industry power players, many top wrestlers and thousands of fans from all around the world.

Randy Orton vs. John Cena for the WWE title was added to SummerSlam after Cena won a beat the clock challenge. It seems they are also building towards a DX reunion vs. The Legacy.

The Smackdown tapings are tonight at the 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore, MD with Jeff Hardy vs. John Morrison. There was some debate today whether this would be a title match or not. We’re looking for reader reports to [email protected].

The only update we have on Maryse is that she flew from Atlanta to Birmingham, AL on Monday afternoon and was today looking at surgery on the knee she dislocated last year. She has been working in discomfort for some time.

Many people noticed this but the segment on Raw with Shaq and Santino playing scrabble was taken verbatim from the ESPN commercial. ESPN host Scott Van Pelt was making fun of WWE last night on SportsCenter for spoofing the idea, which apparently was Shaq’s in the first place.

Taped for Superstars last night was John Morrison vs. Tyson Kidd and Randy Orton vs. Primo. Both matches said to be good. Dark match was Jamie Noble over Alex Riley from developmental.

The Raw rating came in at a 4.0 which is up significantly from last week. In fact, its the fourth highest TV rating of the year so far for WWE.

Post-Raw there was a birthday celebration ofor Triple H, including a huge cake fight with Vince McMahon, Batista and the rest of the locker room. There must be a lack of Michael Jackson stories today because TMZ posted the video at http://tinyurl.com/ng972s.

Shad Gaspard of Cryme Tyme is up for a role in a movie called Dead and Gone. The film is set to be filmed in the US and Fiji in 2010. Its about two brothers; who have never met each other and come together to avenge their gangster fathers death before a rival mob boss kills them both.

WWE has offered developmental deals to Joe Gomez and Ki Vuda. Don’t have much info on them other than they trained under former WWE wrestler Samu of Headshrinker fame.

Creative are considering turning Gail Kim or Mickie James heel but haven’t yet committed to the idea. There were subtle hints in the Divas match last night with Gail doing the blind tag on Mickie, who gave her a curious look.

Dolph Ziggler was originally booked to win the IC title literally hours before Night of Champions. Vince changed his mind at some point between Saturday and Sunday afternoon, but he didn’t give a reason to anyone other than he had a rethink and felt the timing wasn’t right.

Jesse (Ray Gordy Jr.) will be billed as Slam Master J moving forward.

WWE returns to Indiana State University’s Hulman Center in Terre Haute, IN on 10/10 for a house show.

TNA sent out a press release today hyping their 200th episode of Impact
noting Bobby Lashley will speak for the first time about his plans to do
wrestling concurrently as a MMA fighter. They have also changed the
overrun from 15 to 5 minutes. So why bother even announcing it?

A five-date tour of Germany and Switzerland was announced for September.
Tour stops include Nuremberg, Chemnitz, Dortmund, Hannover, and Zurich.Kurt Angle, AJ Styles, Rhino, Team 3D and Samoa Joe are among those
advertised as appearing.

Mickie Knuckles in a interview with www.thewrestlingpress.com claims she
is TNA bound. Knuckles had signed with the company last year but soon
after her TV debut (under the name “Moose“) she snapped her femur
attempting a high risk move at an IWA-Mid South show. Actually the
chances of her being brought back are quite high as she owes the company
money. A well-informed source told us: “She was brought to TNA at the
request on the booking team. Prior to that [IWA-Mis South] had booked
[TNA talent] for two shows and paid by check. One check was on an IWA
Mid-South bank account, the other was on Mickie Knuckles‘ bank account.
Both bounced… Obviously TNA wouldn’t pay someone who owed it money
without taking some of the money from the pay to pay off the debt. She
got hurt, and I think it was before she had signed a contract.”

Jenna Morasca told a porky in the blog she wrote regarding her match
with Sharmell at Victory Road. She wrote that she had no prior in-ring
training and only had a few days to put the match together. We’ve heard
from multiple sources in the company who say that simply wasn’t true as
Jenna and Sharmell have been practising their match since June. “I am
freaking proud of myself, I had fun, thought it looked good,” she wrote
of the match.

OTHER WRESTLING NEWS

Hulk Hogan and Linda Bollea have reached a settlement in their much
publicized divorce case. They even exchanged a kiss this morning at a
brief hearing in Clearwater, FL. Details were not disclosed but the pair
have agreed a deal on property and money. Linda told press after the
hearing: “The war is over. I still love him. He’s the father of my
children.” Hulk added: “When you’re married to someone for 23 years …
you hope for the best …. We just got torn apart.” Linda had filed for
divorce in 2007 after a friend of daughter Brooke, 33-year-old
Christiane Plante, had claimed in an interview with The National
Enquirer that she had an affair with Hulk while the Hogan family was
shooting the TV reality show Hogan Knows Best.

Showbiz Tonight on CNN tonight includes a feature on the Hogan’s.

The Associated Press reviewed Brook Hogan’s new album The Redmption:
“Brooke Hogan may know best on her reality show, but she should have
known better than churning out the lackluster album The Redemption. It’s
all tricks, and few treats. On most songs it’s hard to tell where the
vocoder and production tricks end and Hogan’s own voice begins. This is
bad, since Hogan has a perfectly fine pop music voice. But she lets the
folks behind the mixing board overpower her to a fault.”

Former ECW valet Francine Fournier gave birth to a girl, Molly Rose, in
the early hours of this morning. Baby weighed in at 9 pounds 4 oz., and
was 21 inches long.

Director Len Wiseman confirmed that Dwanye ‘The Rock’ Johnson will not
be in the Gears of War movie. His next big project is Faster, about an
ex-con is out to avenge his brother’s death after they were
double-crossed during a heist years ago. Shooting starts in a couple of
months.

Anthony Roderick, a 41-year-old indy wrestler out of Providence, RI
passed away on 7/18. We don’t have any more details at press time.

Torrie Wilson says she is planning to run in the Chevron Houston
Marathon in January.

MMA fighter Josh Barnett is heading to Japan next month and will be
doing pro wrestling with the IGF group. Barnett made news headlines last
week after he failed a drug test ahead of his fight against Fedor
Emelianenko for Affliction.